US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education, a decades-old goal of the American right, which wants individual states to run schools free from the influence of federal government. Surrounded by schoolchildren sitting at desks set up in the East Room of the White House, Trump smiled as held up the order after signing it. Trump said the order would "begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all." "We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It's doing us no good," Trump said. "We're going to return education back to the states where it belongs." The Education Department, created in 1979, cannot be shuttered without the approval of Congress, but Trump's order will likely have the power to starve it of funds and staff. The move is one of the most drastic steps yet in the brutal overhaul of the government that Trump is carrying out with the help of tech tycoon E...